Advanced Micro Devices Inc has reported a strong increase of revenues, but a $396 million loss.

AMD posted revenue of 1.63 billion dollars, up 18 per cent from the second quarter and 23 per cent from the third quarter a year earlier.

"Our goal is to break even, and we have a shot at it" this quarter, said Robert Rivet, AMD's chief financial officer. "Everything needs to work. It's not just one business that drives the business."

Rivet said the company "was encouraged by the progress" in the quarter, in which it sold a record number of chips and began shipments of a quad-core Opteron processor.

Microprocessor unit shipments increased 16 per cent over the previous quarter, he said, while mobile processor unit shipment were up by 41 per cent.

In September AMD launched its Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, which has four processor cores on a silicon chip that also includes a memory controller hub and high-speed HyperTransport links. During the same month AMD announced AMD Phenom triple-core processors, the world’s first PC processors to integrate three computational cores on a single die of silicon, will be available in Q1 2008.

Meanwhile, Intel reported earlier this week a record third quarter earnings. Intel’s net income for the quarter grew 43 per cent to 1.86 billion dollars, or 31 cents per share, up from 1.30 billion dollars, or 22 cents per share, a year ago. Operating income was 2.2 billion dollars, up 64 per cent from last year.

"A combination of great products, strong and growing worldwide demand, and operational efficiency from our ongoing restructuring efforts led to record third-quarter revenue and a 64-percent year-over-year gain in operating income," said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini. "Looking forward, we see each of these elements continuing to improve into the fourth quarter. We are very pleased with the results and optimistic about our business."